This book explores the underbelly of globalisation - the illicit networks of money, drugs, people and arms that make up a multi-billion dollar illegal economy.

This is the dangerous world of trafficking, identified by developed countries as the major threat to international order. In their eyes, it brings unwanted and undocumented people into the hidden crevices of affluent societies; guns and drugs are exchanged for access to the global market through the backdoor. As a result, trafficking is scrutinised, vilified, outlawed, even as free trade is celebrated.

Gargi Bhattacharyya argues that trafficking is the unacknowledged underside of globalisation. The official economy relies on this illegal economy. Without it, globalisation cannot access cheap labour, it cannot reach vulnerable new markets, and it cannot finance expansion into the places most ravaged by human suffering. Traffick has become the secret basis of global expansion.

I have no hesitation in saying it promises to be an excellent and much needed book and recommend[...] that you accept it. I would certainly use it as recommended reading on my undergraduate course on human rights and globalization -- Professor O'Connell Davidson, Nottingham University

Gargi Bhattacharyya is Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at University College London. Professor Bhattacharyya is the author of The Futures of Racial Capitalism (Polity, 2022), Rethinking Racial Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things (Pluto, 2005), amongst other works.